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Heb_2:5. The author has brought into relief the fact, Heb_2:3, that it was the Son of God, or the Lord, according to chap. 1, highly exalted above the angels, by whom the Messianic salvation was proclaimed, and from whose immediate disciples it was handed down to Christendom. He now justifies this order of things as founded in a higher divine decree, and already foretold in the Scriptures of the Old Covenant. That order of things is, however, justified, in conformity to the comparison of Christ with the angels, which is begun with Heb_1:4, first, e contrario or negatively, Heb_2:5, and then, Heb_2:6, positively. The emphasis lies in Heb_2:5 upon ἀγγέλοις , and this then finds its antithesis in ἄνθρωπος and υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου , Heb_2:6. For when the author first in an absolute form of expression says: For not unto the angels has He put into subjection the world to come, and then continues: But one in a certain place testifies, etc., the sense—on account of the close connectedness of Heb_2:6 (see on that verse) with Heb_2:5—is certainly this: for, according to the testimony of Scripture, the world to come is put in subjection, not to angels, but to Christ, the Son of man.
ἀγγέλοις ] without article. For it stands generically: beings who are angels, who have the nature of angels (Bleek). [Owen: nature angelical.] De Wette supposes the reason for the anarthrous form to be in the possibility that only a part of the angels are to be thought of. Unsuitably, because in connection with οὐκ ἀγγέλοις already the definite antithesis: “but to the Son of man,” was present to the mind of the author (comp. Heb_2:6).
ὑπέταξεν ] sc. ὁ θεός , which naturally follows from the τοῦ θεοῦ of Heb_2:4. The verb expresses the notion of making dependent, or of the placing in a position of subjection, and is chosen because the same expression is employed in the citation presently to be adduced (comp. Heb_2:8).
τὴν οἰκουμένην τὴν μέλλουσαν ] the world to come. This mode of designating it is explained from the well-known Biblical phraseology, according to which the Messianic period was distinguished as the αἰὼν μέλλων , from the pre-Messianic as the αἰὼν αὗτος .[43] What is meant, consequently, is not something purely future (Theodoret: ὁ μέλλων βίος ; Oecumenius: ὁ ἐσόμενος κόσμος ; Schulz: the new order of the world which is approaching; Bleek II. the blessings of the kingdom of God which will first be manifested and conferred upon believers at the return of the Lord in glory; Grotius, Maier, and others: heaven, as the future dwelling-place of the Christians also), but the new order of things in the Messianic kingdom, which in its first manifestations has already appeared, but as regards its completion is still a future one. Calvin: apparet non vocari orbem futurum dumtaxat, qualem e resurrectione speramus, sed qui coepit ab exordio regni Christi, complementum vero suum habebit in ultima redemptione. τὴν οἰκουμένην τὴν μέλλουσαν is itself without emphasis; on the contrary, only resumes under another form the τηλικαύτης σωτηρίας of Heb_2:3. It results from this, that the opinion according to which the tacit contrast is to be supplied in thought to the declaration, Heb_2:5 : “the present world is indeed” to be regarded as “subjected to the angels, by them swayed and governed” (Cameron, Bleek, Riehm, Lehrbegr. des Hebräerbr. p. 656, al.), is a baseless one. For it must then have been written οὐ γὰρ τὴν μέλλουσαν οἰκουμένην ἀγγέλοις ὑπέταξεν .
περὶ ἧς λαλοῦμεν ] does not go back to Heb_1:6 (Theophylact, Zeger, Grotius, Schlichting, Schulz, Böhme; comp. also Delitzsch),—against which the present λαλοῦμεν , in place of which a preterite must have been expected, and not less the addition τὴν μέλλουσαν to τὴν οἰκουμένην , is decisive,—nor is λαλοῦμεν put in place of a future: “de quo in sequenti testimonio loquemur” (Vatablus); but the relative clause is to be taken quite generally: which is the subject of our discourse (our epistle). Too specially Kurtz: “of which we are speaking just now, in this section of our epistle,” which would have called for the addition of a νῦν . The plural λαλοῦμεν , moreover, has reference merely to the writer. Comp. Heb_5:11, Heb_6:9; Heb_6:11, Heb_13:18. Without good reason does Bengel supplement nos doctores; while even, according to Hofmann, “all who believe the promise, the apostle and his readers,” are the subject of λαλοῦμεν , inasmuch as it is only a question of an “additional explanatory clause, when the apostle adds that that world to come is intended, of which the Christians speak!”
[43] We have not to seek the origin of the addition τὴν μέλλουσαν in the fact that at the time of the Psalmist (ver. 6), that which was promised belonged as yet to the purely future (so, along with the right explanation this likewise in Bleek I.).